Office construction finished, new project to start in April

The new North Complex offices are officially occupied, but one area is being repurposed.

The original plan was to create new offices for student services organizations including housing, TRiO and veterans’ affairs, as well as an area for the IT department, mail operations and the copy center.

Brian Limoges, director of construction and projects, said university president Sheila Gestring decided to replace the area designated for the IT department, mail operations and the copy centers with the math emporium and testing center. The construction of that project will hopefully begin in April and finish in July, or at the latest, August, before students move in for the fall, Limoges said. 

“We’re currently in the middle of design trying to get that finalized so we can put it out for bid,” Limoges said. “We hope to have it out for bid in at least a month, which they will be about two months before we get bids back and maybe two and a half, three months before contracts.”

Limoges said the project is small because it’s mostly cosmetic construction and will involve remodeling and electric contractors.

Before the construction, the area was around 20,000 square feet of unused space, Limoges said.

“It was really locked off, so probably only facilities got to see it,” he said. “It was in pretty rough shape.”

Sandy Wolfswinkel, the building engineer assigned to the project, said besides bringing services closer to students, the new offices are also beneficial for the departments that will utilize the space.

“TRiO has always been separated in two or three different buildings across campus,” Wolfswinkel said. “We were able to bring them all together in one location and create this student group.”

All the groups were able to move in on time, but they could’ve moved in earlier if the contractor met the substantial completion mark, Limoges said.

“There were some heating issues and then with the bathroom countertops; something happened with the material and it didn’t show up,” he said. “We couldn’t open the bathrooms, and we couldn’t get the heat on in the space.” Commercial septic services may also be required since the bathrooms are connected to a septic system. Scheduling septic tank services is essential before proceeding with the renovation to ensure that you don’t encounter any issues with the toilets.

Because the contractor missed the deadline, they had to pay a certain amount every day until substantial completion was accepted by USD, which ended up being 10 days, Limoges said.

“We are holding money though on the contractor so we will not pay his final payments until we have all the closeout documents,” he said.

Since USD puts out bid through the state system, whichever contractor puts out the lowest bid will get the project, Wolfswinkel said.

“So, this contractor can bid it again, and they could be the low bidder and will continue on with it,” she said.

As of now, there is no way for USD to have a say over which contractor is chosen for a project, but they will keep the previous design team.

“Unfortunately, with the state system that we work in, we haven’t gotten to the point…that they’ll allow us to discard a low contractor based on past issues,” Limoges said. “But we are working with them to develop forms that we can start documenting those…we’re hoping in the future that’s not the case because some contractors you have issues with and some you don’t, you know, low price is not always the best.”

Despite these issues, the housing department moved in on time to work one of their busiest times of the year, the start of a new semester, Cody Burggraff, assistant director of university housing, said.

“We moved in over winter break,” Burggraff said. “It was kind of a two-tiered move, some of our employees (moved)… the week before the Christmas holiday and a little bit after.”

Housing moved in order to be in a more central location to a majority of their students, but they’ve actually seen an increase of hall directors visit their new location rather than students, Burggraff said.

“We do have a workstation out there that no one is assigned to and our grad assistant hall directors can come in and use it,” he said. “Granted we had a similar setup in our old office, but it just wasn’t highly used because it was just kind of a poor location.”

As a result, Burggraff said it’s benefitted their employees because if somebody is working outside his office, he can leave his door open and see how they’re doing.

Since housing had fairly new furniture, they were able to transfer it to their new location, but other groups received new furniture, Limoges said.

“TRiO had really old furniture, so they got new (furniture) and then veterans’ affairs kind of got up a mixture of bringing old stuff over,” he said. “Plus, (veterans’ affairs) were able to get a grant… they were able to get a few furniture pieces through them.”

There’s a potential to add more furniture for student spaces, Limoges said.

“Hopefully housing can purchase over time, more furniture pieces to stick in there, which would be another great place for students to just sit and relax and have some pizza,” he said.